


Red Knight/Black Knight

by shouldbeover



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergent, Peggy Carter has secrets, The Red Room, captain america gay icon?, clint barton is a saint, history divergent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-08-11 12:27:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7892317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldbeover/pseuds/shouldbeover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In late 1944 Captain Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, and his childhood friend and comrade-in-arms Bucky Barnes fell to their deaths from a train in the Alps.  </p><p>In 2011 the former KGB agent, Russian defector, and highly regarded S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanov told S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury that both men, looking exactly as they did in 1944 only rough and unkempt, had trained her in the Red Room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The death of Captain America, rather than being demoralizing, served as a catalyst, re-invigorating a nation tired of war. More war bonds, more scrap metal drives; women and the invalided home keeping the factories running 24 hours a day.

Howard Stark was everywhere with new weapons and new technologies, and very quietly starting the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division with Peggy Carter. He also flew repeated solo missions into the mountains trying to find the bodies of his friends and bring them home but with no success. President Roosevelt proposed and President Truman signed into effect Captain America Day, March 10th. In early 1945 Stark recovered the Tesseract from Red Skull's downed plane. There was no sign of the man himself.

In Germany, in his bunker, Hitler mourned the loss of his HYDRA support and the super weapons they had promised him. By April it was all over.

In Moscow Joseph Stalin welcomed his new HYDRA scientists and the two prisoners of war they brought with them who, they promised him, would change the course of history.

The Allies had won World War II, but the Cold War was just beginning and it seemed almost from the start that they were being outmaneuvered by the Soviet Union. From the assassinations of key figures and needed scientists, to the destruction of secret bases of operations, the Soviets were always one step ahead. It wasn't until the 1960s, when Charles Xavier, at Peggy Carter's urging, began to encourage the mutants he taught to use their special skills for S.H.I.E.L.D. and other similar intelligence agencies, that the Western allies would start to really gain back ground, but by that point Soviet troops were winning in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the South-East Asian War.

In 1953, attempts at peace negotiations over the divided Korea failed after the deaths of UN envoys and a failed assassination attempt on the newly elected Dwight Eisenhower. Western intelligence agencies were stumped by reports of a mysterious soldier, appearing and disappearing like a ghost, dressed in black, face hidden by a mask and goggles, single-handedly attacking military strongholds, bringing the war effort to its knees. Stalin was thrilled. After seven long years of reprogramming, his super soldiers were ready. He dubbed them the Red Knight and the Black Knight, code names that would stick to them on both sides of the Cold War for the next 40 years.

But HYDRA, hidden but not inactive, had other plans. Stalin's Russia was just a means to an end, as Stalin found out too late on March 1, 1953 when the Red Soldier came to his room and strangled the life out of him. It was only after several years of blurry photos and incomplete intel, half-formed theories, and wild guesses, that S.H.I.E.L.D. determined that there were two assassins: one, the blonde, dressed in dark red, who was primarily deployed for hand-to-hand assassinations and mass destruction; the other, dark haired and dressed in all black, was a sharp shooter, able make near impossible shots to take out the most heavily protected targets. And he had a metal arm.

Through the 1950s and 60s three curious facts emerged:

  * The two soldiers, or knights as they were called, always worked alone, were never deployed together and even seldom at the same time in different areas of the world.
  * Many years might pass between sightings of either or any evidence of their handiwork.
  * And they fought exactly the same after two decades as they had during the Korean conflict. There was no slowing down or diminished ability as one might expect from aging and repeatedly injured soldiers.



HYDRA agents had very strict orders to never allow the men to interact. There were only two times when their paths crossed. The crisis of 1962 required one soldier to go to Cuba, the other to Washington D.C. By accident their two cryo-chambers and the chair were placed in the same room after the mission. The Red Knight returned first. He had just been frozen, the rime of frost not yet covering the glass of his pod, when the Black Knight was brought in. He stopped, resisting his handlers as they led him to the chair.

"That man, who is he?" he asked.

"It is the Red Knight. You are the Black Knight. The twin fists of HYDRA, the right hand and the left. This is what you are," the young, blonde controller replied coolly. "You have no other identity but the Black Knight. You have no other purpose but HYDRA."

The Black Knight still resisted. "But I know him."

"You may have seen him in a previous mission." To the technicians he said, "Wipe him, thoroughly this time."

Over the gagged screams of the Black Knight he snapped to his second. "I want to see the fuck-up who allowed them to be together. NOW!" HYDRA does not tolerate mistakes. The two cryo-chambers were never left together in the same room again.

The second time was in 1971. The Red Knight was outside Saigon. The Black Knight was supposed to be in Hanoi but his target had changed his plans without warning and the Black Knight had no choice but to pursue him. The mission was all. The Red Knight saw him across a field. The Red Knight heard the approaching choppers, but it seemed the man in black did not. Some hidden part of his mind wanted to shout a warning, "Watch out, Bu--" but as he tried to form a name, a searing pain drove all thoughts from his mind. He had been conditioned to associate the name with pain. Before he could recover, a wall of napalm separated them and the other man disappeared from the Red Knight's mind even as the man disappeared from view.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a graduate of the Red Room is captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Clint Barton.

In 1991 seven year old Natalia Romanov was sold to HYDRA in exchange for her mother's travel papers out of the collapsing Soviet Union. For three years she was taught languages and ballet. At ten her real training began.

The last year was all tests. Every girl in the Red Room knew that. People came and went, giving tests, facilitating the tests, being the tests. The last did not leave. In the middle of the year the Red Knight would come to the school. At the end of the year the Black Knight would come. The girls wondered about the Knights. Who were they, where did they come from? The girls who completed the Red Knight's test whispered amongst themselves that there was nothing in his eyes. He wasn't human, just a murderous machine.

When Natalia was still young enough to ask questions, when she was young enough not to be punished for asking questions she asked, "Why are the Knights machines. Are we to be machines?"

Her French master, old and crippled, smiled at her and said, "Talia, my little one, how does one open a lock?"

"It can be broken or it can be picked."

"Which takes more thought?"

"To be picked."

"Exactly. The Knights are the fists of Mother Russia. They break locks. They need no thought to do their work. But you, my little swans, you are the fingers. You must be clever little lock picks."

It was understood that you could not win against the Red Knight. The test was how long you could last before he had you in a death grip. Natalia lasted one minute and fifty-four seconds. It was a record. It guaranteed her standing at the top of her class. The final test before gradduation was the Black Room. All you had to do was get through an obstacle course in the dark. Get through while being hunted by the Black Knight. There was no standing at the end of the test. You were alive or you were dead. A bullet grazed Natalia's thigh, but she made it through.

After graduation, the stitches still pulling at her gut, there was a dance, a peculiar charade of normalcy. There was only one male dance partner, the Black Knight. He was shaved and his hair had been trimmed, albeit haphazardly, and he had been dressed in an ill-fitting suit. Dance with him, Natalia's handlers said. "You are the top graduate, you may ask him to dance." As she held up her hand for him to take she realized that he might have been a handsome man in another life. He had a strong jaw, deep-set pale blue eyes framed with black lashes, a cleft in his chin, and sensual lips. She wondered if he had a nice smile, if he had dimples at the edges of his wide mouth. But there was nothing in those blue eyes, and nothing but an indifferent sullen twist to his lips. Maybe it was the lights, or maybe the painkillers, but for just a fraction of a second she thought she caught something in his eyes, something sad, and frightened, and human, but it was gone before she could be sure. It occurred to her that the Red Knight had been handsome as well, with his blonde hair, bright blue eyes with long lashes, and his pink lips. What would his smile be like? Would it be like the smiles in the American propaganda movies they were forced to watch? The Black Knight waltzed her around the floor. He danced like an automaton. The actions were perfect, but there was no feeling in them, no subtle nuances that marked a dancer enjoying the dance. It made her think of the figures twirling in a music box.

She didn't even realize she was falling until her head slammed against the dance floor, the metal hand wrapped around her throat, the Black Knight kneeling on her chest with his legs pinning hers to the ground. Her vision was just beginning to black out when she heard the controller begin saying the words that would turn off the weapon that was a man.

A final test then, for the handler's amusement. The lesson: to never let down one's guard, even for a second, to trust nothing and no one but one's handler, not even a comrade. What she learned was to trust nothing and no one, not even one's handler. 

Sometimes the Red Room would not be enough. A top graduate would fumble on a real mission. Natalia never fumbled. She could change plans in an instant when the situation changed. She learned to improvise weapons when her own weren't available. She was a clever lock-pick.

When she was twenty-four on an assassination run, an arrow flew out of seemingly nowhere--an arrow--and hit her with 50,000 volts of electricity. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, she thought as she struggled to regain control of her body. I'm getting old or over-confident. Before she could maneuver herself back up onto her knees a second arrow wrapped her a fine netting that tightened the more she struggled. 

Footsteps approaching. She prepared for pain and she prepared for death. She was not prepared for a man holding a bow with a quiver of arrows on his back to kneel down next to her, smile and say, "Hi, I'm Clint. What's your name?"

"No answer?" he continued in the same cheery voice. "Well, we've got time for the niceities later. For now, our ride is here." He slung her bound body up on his shoulder like a sack of flour and walked up the ramp of an American Quinjet where he dumped her on the floor with as much gentleness as he could. 

"Who's this?" said a cold, female voice.

"A defector," her captor replied.

"She tell you that?"

"She's just a kid, May."

"I take that as a no. She tell you anything?"

Ah, thought Natalia, I am being taken for interrogation. 

A slim, small woman who bristled with power kneeled down into her field of vision. The owner of the cold voice, "Red Room graduate, I presume?"

Natalia said nothing.

May nodded as though she had her answer and got back up. "They train them hard and they train them young in the Red Room, Barton. She's not a kid, she's never been a kid."

"Aw," said her captor, "that just sucks. Everybody deserves a childhood."

"She's not a stray puppy, Barton! Weren't your orders to shoot to kill? Or is this NOT the black widow Fury sent us out here to bring down."

Black widow, Natalia thought, I like that.

"I DID bring her down, I just didn't...put her down. Like a stray puppy."

Their voices became fainter as they moved away, presumably to the front of the plane. 

"Fury is going to be...well, furious. What the hell were you thinking?" May asked.

"It was just...something. Don't look at me like that. I'm in love with Laura, heart and soul and I'm going to ask her to marry me, maybe retire to a little farm...anyway. There was just something about her. Just think about if we could turn her, May! What we could learn! Fury trusts my judgement and my judgement was to bring her in.

Trapped in the webbing that wouldn't give a centimeter no mater how much she struggled Natalia could only listen and learn. Clint Barton had a weakness named Laura. All affection can be made into a weapon. They were going to interrogate her and they were going to turn her. She'd been trained to withstand both.


	3. Historical note

The loss of South East Asia to Communist forces, and civil rights conflicts at home led to an anti-nationalist sentiment and Captain America, or the idea of Captain America, suffered as a result. However in the late 70s as the AIDS epidemic was just beginning to be felt in the Gay community, an article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Captain America and his Sargent - Steve Rogers and James 'Bucky' Barnes, Inseparable in Life and Death?"

The article polarized the nation; the religious right blasted the insinuation. How dare the Gays try to besmirch Captain America's honor. On the left Rogers and Barnes became gay icons. Captain America Day, March 10th, Bucky Barnes' birthday, became known as the 'gay' Valentine's Day, a day for proposals, exchanging of vows in front of friends if not in the eyes of the church or the law, and other extreme romantic gestures for same-sex couples, though not to the point of jumping off of a moving train in the Swiss Alps. As the AIDS epidemic raged on though, ignored by the mainstream, some couples did leap from the Golden Gate Bridge and other public monuments in protest. Gay Republicans began to call themselves Bucky Barnes Republicans trying, they said, to effect change from the inside. Pins of Captain America's shield became an emblem of gay pride along side the rainbow flag and the pink triangle.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suspect breaking an agent would be much more difficult than I portray and much darker, but the movies set this up and by the movies we shall go. Clint Barton is a saint.

There was a small screen for privacy and a toilet with no door. Other than that she was completely exposed to view through a large glass wall. For the first week she wasn't allowed sheets on the bed and the pillow was strapped down. There was an airlock where her food was placed so that she was never allowed near the person who brought in. She could not go and get the tray until the visitor was safely outside the outer door. The cutlery and the tray dissolved after an hour leaving no chance to become weapons. It was in all a very thorough cage, and one, Natalia suspected meant to hold people far more dangerous than she.  
For the first 48 hours she was left completely alone except for the silent figures who brought in the trays of food. After 48 hours she was asked if she needed anything, toilet paper, feminine products. She did not tell them that the need for feminine products had been removed from her as part of her graduation. She told them nothing at all.  
She expected men with knives and pliers. What she got was a tall, black man with an eye patch who stared at her through the glass for twenty minutes and then went away.  
After one week she had a visitor: the man who had brought her in.  
"Hi, I'm Clint, in case you forgot. How are they treating you? You look good, I mean considering. You could look a lot worse, if you know what I mean."  
She sat on the bed trying to meditate.  
"Sooo...you know, if you need anything just ask. We really do just want you to feel comfortable. Just let me know." Clint went away.  
She meditated. She exercised. She lay on the bed and stared at the plain white ceiling and told herself the entirety of The Brothers Karamazov from memory. Days passed.  
Clint came back.   
"Hey, I brought you some cookies. I'm just going to put them in the airlock for you. Do you mind if I read here? Believe it or not, it's really hard to find a quiet place in the complex." He sat on the floor and read for 40 minutes. She couldn't see the name of the book.  
"You should try the cookies. They're terrible. My girlfriend made them, God bless her, she's trying. She makes these huge batches and I'm stuck trying to give them away. Seriously people run when they see me coming in with a Tupperware container. She's getting better. Like, these are edible. First batch? You could have used them in a grill as charcoal. She'll get it though. She can do anything if she sets her mind to it.   
"She was supposed to be a field agent but didn't like it. Got through most of the training and realized she was more use sitting at the computer screen supporting the agents. How we met, actually. She sent a report to Fury that I was a reckless idiot. She wasn't wrong."  
"Hey, do you want me to read to you? It's Harry Potter. You get Harry Potter in Russia? Probably don't get much time to read, though, amIrite? What with all the assassinations and stuff. Man, I know. Loving having this downtime. You're my 'special project' so I get to hang around here getting to know you."  
Natalia had yet to speak a word since her capture.  
Clint came back everyday. Sometimes he would read a passage to her from whatever he was reading. Sometimes he told her about movies he'd seen.  
"I dunno. I hate sequels and Indiana Jones, I mean come on. Hang it up, guys. Right?"  
He talked about Laura. He brought burnt brownies and underdone pies. He told her about growing up in the circus.  
"I mean, I know I wasn't being trained to, you know, spy and kill, but I never really got much of an education. Just how to shoot a bow and arrow. Great novelty act; William Tell and all that. I can walk a tightrope, ride a unicycle, and juggle 5 on-fire clubs. But don't ask me what the capital of West Virginia is. So we've kind of got that in common. Being trained as kids. Never knowing anything like, normal."  
Once he came in with the black man with the eye patch.  
"I'm not seeing it, Barton. Wrap this up soon or I pass her on to the black squad."  
One day he told her that he would be gone for a few days on a mission. She found that she missed his visits.  
He told her terrible jokes. "So then Uncle Albert says, 'What was the name of his other leg?' Gettit? If the first leg is named Smith...God, I love that movie. Supercalifragilistic! You ever get out of here I'm going to take you to see all the great American movies you probably missed."  
And then, one day Clint told a joke so bad it made her laugh.   
"HEY! You laughed at my joke. Knew there was a sense of humor in there."   
After she 'broke' the real work began as she'd known it must. But Clint still came by.  
Then there were people asking her about dates and times, about her training, about anything and everything. They showed her documents to prove that she'd been working for Hydra all along--for Nazis. They showed pictures of her mother's body. She hadn't escaped at all. Natalia's childhood had been sold for nothing. They showed her films of her victims families. They wore her out with questions and propaganda. Was it still propaganda if it was true?  
When, after 1 year, four months and two days, she was deemed safe Clint was there to take her out for ice cream. He took her running. He sparred with her in the gym. He taught her sign language. She had never realized that he wore hearing aids. She was more nervous to meet Laura than she had been for most of her tests in the Red Room, but Laura was just like Clint. Laura embraced her like family. She was an usher at their wedding, and gave a toast. She gave Laura recipes she remembered from childhood.  
She had been turned with kindness and it terrified her.  
And she was still shocked when Director Fury asked to see her.  
"So, Miss Romanov, they tell me that you have been very cooperative. Barton is...well, one of a kind. So, now that we don't believe that you will return to Hydra there's the question of what you'll do next. If you want, SHIELD will provide you with a new identity in a safe and boring town. There are a lot of corporations that would be thrilled to hire someone with your language skills. You could also work for the US government as an interpreter. Quantico would be pleased to have you. We've sent several defectors their way over the years. Of course, you'd be monitored, but eventually after you'd proved you weren't going to run back and give our secrets to anti-American interests, that would stop.  
"Or, I have a proposition for you: come work for me, here at SHIELD. You could be a great analyst and handler, and let's be frank, you have an extraordinary set of skills that we could definitely use in the field. I know Barton would be happy to take you under his wing. I'll let you have a few days to decide."  
As she stood to leave Fury added, "Of course, if you compromise a mission in any way, or betray us, you will be summarily executed. You do understand that, don't you? I'm giving you a second chance. You won't get a third."  
"I would expect it, sir. And I would welcome it."  
Natasha took two hours to decide. A quiet life would be like an itch under her skin. She had been trained to be a weapon and that would always be there. Better she burn off the fire inside her by pointing in a different direction. Her loyalty was not exactly to SHIELD, though it could certainly become that in time. Her loyalty was to Barton.  
During the interrogation she had only mentioned the knights when describing her training in the Red Room. They did not ask more and she did not think to give it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha tells Director Fury what she knows about the Knights

Natasha liked Agent 13, Sharon.  And she respected her, which was rare.   Sharon was extraordinarily cool under pressure, and could improvise weapons almost as well as Natasha.  She was no match for a Red Room graduate, but she was a damn fine fighter.  They were rooming together, undercover.  Weeks went by and their target was annoyingly boring, no sign of nefarious schemes.  It was bad, but they were both getting sloppy, casual about their covers. 

Sharon plopped a box down on the kitchen table with a sigh.  “Poor Aunt Peggy.”

“Your aunt?  Your…real aunt?” Natasha asked, surprised.

Sharon rolled her eyes.  “Yeah, I went to see her.  Terrible I know, but I wasn’t followed, and I was back in time to see Mr. Markus walk his Persian same as ever.  Who walks a cat?  I had to go.  Aunt Peggy’s going…a bit off and she’s going into a…facility…for old spies.”

“Your aunt is, was a spy?” 

Sharon grinned.  “Um, yeah.  This isn’t widely known, but I know nothing leaks from your lips.  My Aunt Peggy is Peggy Carter, the woman who made SHIELD.”

“Wow!  We were always taught that women had no power in America.”

“Well, it was basically true, but Aunt Peggy was, and still is an incredible, formidable woman.  She also knows everything about SHIELD.  That’s kind of why she knows she has to go somewhere safe so that if anything slipped well, let’s just say that clearance for the staff is level nine and above.”

Natasha laughed, “Guess we’ll end up there someday.  Or on the wall.”

Sharon laughed in response, “Well, that’s cheery.  I just hope that when I retire, however I retire, I’ll be remembered for having done as much good as Aunt Peggy.  Anyway, Aunt Peggy wanted me to take some of her old photos and personal stuff before she went away.  I’m not sure what’s in there.  Let’s look.”

Sharon dumped the contents of the box onto the table.  Most were faded black and white’s, some faded Polaroids, a few slides.  Mostly family photos.  Peggy, presumably, with a husband and children.  Some of two children in old fashioned clothes on a croquet court. 

But then Natasha noticed one photo of two men laughing.  She pulled it from the pile. 

“Who are these men?”

Sharon looked at the photo and giggled.  “You don’t know?  That’s Captain America and Sargent Barnes.   Captain America was Aunt Peggy’s sweetheart before he died.  I thought everyone knew that.”

“Russian childhood.”

“Yeah, of course, but I thought he’d have been part of your brainwashing, er, I mean training in the Red Room.”

“No,” Natasha whispered.  “We were told about Captain America, but he was wearing a mask in all of the films we were shown.  Sharon, these men…these men are the Knights.  The Red and Black Knights.”

Sharon froze.  “Are you sure?  Are you absolutely sure?  Because Captain America and Sargent Barnes died in 1944.  They fell from a train.”

Natasha looked at her coolly.  “Were there bodies recovered?  I am absolutely sure.  They were part of our training.   We had to survive them in our last year.  I looked into both of their faces.  They were rough looking, not clean cut like this, not smiling.”  To herself she thought, I was right, they did have beautiful smiles. 

Sharon collapsed into her chair, face pale.  “Oh, my God.  The Russians turned Captain America.”

“I don’t think they turned them.  I think, I think they did something to them.  They weren’t…all there.  I mean they were like machines.  There was nothing in their eyes.  They said they were the fists of Russia and they didn’t need to think.  There were rumors too.  That they froze them when they weren’t in use.”

“That would explain why they looked the same all those years.  Oh, my God.”  She paused, “We have to tell the Director.  All those years.  They’ve been there, all those years.”  She pulled out the secure phone.  “Agent 13, I need to speak with Director Fury immediately.  Yes, I’ll hold.  Yes, I know.  Tell him it’s about King’s Gambit.”

Within 20 minutes the two women were on a chopper to DC.  In 45 Natasha was in front of Director Fury, a range of files scattered on his desk between them.

“Tell me again: these men,” he pushed two photographs towards her, official military photos, one of Sergeant Barnes and one of Captain Rogers in uniform, not the Captain America suit, “are the same as these men.”  He pushed four photos towards her, blurry and from a distance, the Red Knight and the Black Knight on different missions.  Dates were written in the corners: 1954, 1961, 1981, 1991. 

“Yes, sir.  I have looked directly into the faces of the Red Knight and the Black Knight.  The Black Knight has pale blue eyes, and a cleft in his chin.  The Red Knight has bright blue eyes and a full bottom lip.  The Black Knight has black hair although when I danced with— saw him, it hung nearly to his shoulders, and—“

“You danced with him?  You didn’t mention that earlier.”

“Yes, sir.  I’m sorry, sir.  They made him dance a waltz with me when I graduated.  Then they had him try to kill me.”

It was always hard to read Director Fury’s face.  The eye-patch seemed to close off emotions from one side and it made one’s judgement of the other side skewed.  He pulled the photos back and studied them.

“You say they were brainwashed?”

“Yes.  I never heard either of them speak.  They may…they may have had their tongues removed, or…they may have been lobotomized in some way.”

Director Fury closed his visible eye.  It was the most emotion she’d ever seen from him. 

After a minute pause, he opened his eye again.  “And you are certain that they looked the same age as they do in these photos from 1944?”

“As far as I could tell, sir.  As I said, their hair was long and I believe unwashed.  They had stubble that had only been partially shaved.  But yes, I believe they were the same age.  Each one came to the Red Room once a year, as far back as anyone could remember.  The rumor was that they were kept cryogenically frozen until they were needed.”

“And we don’t know the lasting effects of the serum,” Director Fury muttered to himself.  “They might well be near immortal.”

Looking back at her he said, “Aside from the metal arm they looked uninjured?”

“Yes, sir.”

He stood abruptly and started shuffling the photos and files back together.  “Thank you Agent Romanov.  This information has been of great help.  As I’m sure you are aware, this is top level security and you will speak of this to no one.  You and Agent Carter should not even speak to one another about it.”

She realized she’d been dismissed.

***

Fury requested that Director Carter’s personal papers be brought up from storage.  He spread them out and studied them long into the night.

“What did you know, Peggy, and when did you know it?”

He was looking for a memo of a meeting he’d been privy to in 1974

He was a junior agent then, excited to be accompanying Director Carter to a Joint Chiefs’ of Meeting.  At some point someone had mentioned the Red Knight-Black Knight problem.  To everyone’s surprise Director Carter had said that all investigations into the Knights was to be suspended.  Was it coincidence?  Some other factor?  Or had she known then that the Red Knight and the Black Knight were none other than Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes?  He didn’t want to think that she had, that she had known and for unknown reasons chosen not to make retrieving them a priority.

He finally found the minutes of the meeting at about 3 am.  He remembered that she had been known to make notes for her eyes only, but those had all been sealed up with the official documents.  After a little more digging around the same time he found, in her small, tidy, English boarding school cursive the note:

**_Knights, suspected, partial confirmation, SR, JB, order no action—Coventry operation—world stability at stake_ **

_Can I really do this?  Oh, Steve, what have they done to the two of you.  I want to bring you home but can we risk it?  Captain America—traitor, assassin, POW--people will condemn you or condemn those who did not save you—me, Howard.  Howard tried so hard, you’ll never know how hard.  If we’d known then it was you, but even then, nuclear war over Captain America?  I want to believe that you would understand this decision, that two men’s lives are a small sacrifice to maintain the balance of power and peace.  I want to believe that you would make the same decision if it were reversed, if it were me.  But then I think of you, defying everything and everyone to go save your friend.  But we didn’t have a you, a you who could slip in and fight it all single-handedly.  We were losing, Steve, and we’re losing South-East Asia now.  Revealing the Soviet’s captured Captain America, turned him, tortured him, oh, Steve, it’s the torture that makes this so hard.  How are they keeping you young?  How are they controlling you?  Is it each other?  Because I know if we were able to just save you, you would go back for him, sacrifice yourself again and again for him.  Would it be better if I could just have you both killed?  It’s so hard, Steve.  It’s never clean and how you would have hated that.  Since I found out, since I saw the intel, I’ve thought about asking Charles to find someone who could destroy you both so that no evidence could be found.  But I can’t, I can’t.  I can’t bear the thought of you dead.  You alive even this way is better than you dead.  Where there’s life there’s hope, right?  If there is anything left of you, of either of you, I know you will find your way back eventually.  I just hope I live to see it, to look at you once more, and I hope that should that day come you will be able to forgive me._

Fury put the note back in the file and resealed the box.  He put his head in his hands.  “Peggy, Peggy, Peggy.”  What a thing to have to decide, he thought, what a burden to carry. 

Well, he thought, times are different now.  We’ve learned to live with the uncertainty.   We will get your boys home, Peggy, maybe even in time for you to see them.  And if we can’t, then we will avenge their sacrifice.

He started to write his own memo:

    

**Operation: Knight’s Capture:**

Romanov—she’s seen them, knows Red Room techniques, best source of intel, penetration

Barton—Romanov always works better with Barton

Agent Carter, Sharon—already knows, but would want to keep her aunt’s part from her, from everyone if possible

Running???  Coulson?  Cap his hero, Coulson would be determined to find and save him

He tapped his pen on the desk a few times trying to think of who else.

    

Stark??  Maniac but genius.  Suit might be only thing that could stop them.  Would he want to save his father’s greatest legacy? 

Banner??  Big reveal to Russia but they probably already know.  Also unstable, appeal to his heart?

Some of Charles’ group?  Need to review capabilities.

He sighed and put in a meeting with Coulson in his calendar for the next day.  Coulson might have some other names to add, ideas of where to start. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could say I had a clear idea about where to go next with this story, but I'm not good with writing Avengers missions, or with how to deprogram two brain-scrambled super soldiers when their MCU touchstones--each other--cannot be used. If anyone else wants to co-write, or run with it themselves, please do. Since I don't know the next step, and since I am an erratic and very undisciplined author, I cannot promise if and when there will be a new chapter. Thank you for reading this far.
> 
> 1954 – battle of Dien Bien Phu  
> 1961—Bay of Pigs conflict  
> 1981—assassination of Anwar Sadat  
> 1991—fall of the Soviet Union, death of Howard Stark and his wife
> 
> Coventry—English manufacturing town bombed during WWII, it is alleged by some that Churchill knew through messages decoded by Ultra that Coventry was to be bombed but did nothing in order to not alert the Germans that the Allies had broken the German code


End file.
